The division of Ireland is called ‘the partition’. Before the partition all of Ireland was part of the British Empire, but in 1914, what seemed like a civil war started. IRA (the Irish Republican Army) is a Catholic paramilitary group; they were against Great Britain and wanted Ireland to be an independent country. A Protestant military group was called the Ulster Volunteers and wanted to remain a part of Great Britain. The civil war developed into an Independence War and the Anglo-Irish Treaty was made to stop the war in 1921.
There are Protestants in all of Ireland, but it is only in ‘the North’ that they are the majority of the population. The rest of Ireland gained its independence, but the six counties in the North remained part of the British Empire. The remaining Protestant population in ‘the South’ felt that they were suppressed and many of them fled from the IRA to Northern Ireland.
In Northern Ireland most Protestants are Unionists. In general it means that they want to maintain their union with Britain, but being a Unionist means a lot more than that. Many Unionists are Protestant immigrants from Scotland and England who came in the 17th century. The Protestants are now the majority of the population of Northern Ireland. Unionists fear that if Northern Ireland would become a part of Ireland, the Catholic Church would suppress the Protestant community and culture and make it difficult to practice their religion and “Britishness”.
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